


Define Romantic ...

by msred



Series: Starting Over [15]
Category: Chris Evans (actor) - Fandom, Real Person Fiction
Genre: Actors, Anniversary, Celebrities, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Gift Giving, Long-Distance Relationship, Love, POV First Person, Romantic Fluff, Romantic Gestures, Surprises, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:15:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22684573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msred/pseuds/msred
Summary: Spring cleaning, in January, no less, was not how I’d expected to spend our one-year anniversary. And yet, there we were.  Chris had asked me why some of my Christmas gifts from him and his family still hadn’t been put away, and I’d made the mistake of telling him I just had too much ‘stuff’ at the moment and didn’t have places to put all my new things without just shoving them onto a shelf or into a drawer haphazardly. And thus began the cleaning. Or, as he called it, 'The Purge.'
Relationships: Chris Evans (Actor) & Original Female Character(s), Chris Evans (Actor) & Reader, Chris Evans (Actor) & You, Chris Evans (Actor)/Original Female Character(s), Chris Evans (Actor)/Reader, Chris Evans (Actor)/You
Series: Starting Over [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1423663
Comments: 42
Kudos: 60





	1. The Anniversary

_ 12 months together (January, Year 3) _

Spring cleaning, in January, no less, was  _ not  _ how I’d expected to spend our one-year anniversary. And okay, it wasn’t our  _ actual  _ anniversary until the next day, but still. And yet, there we were. It had started the previous afternoon, when we’d gotten back to my house from the airport and Chris had asked why some of my Christmas gifts from him and his family still hadn’t been put away - books stacked on the kitchen table, the gorgeous cashmere sweater he’d given me folded on top of the dresser, along with a few other sweaters and tops I often wore to work, all but one of Millie’s new toys still unopened - and I’d made the mistake of telling him I just had too much ‘stuff’ at the moment and didn’t have places to put all my new things without just shoving them onto a shelf or into a drawer haphazardly, which I certainly didn’t want to do. 

Before my husband had died, we’d been in the habit of purging things twice a year or so; each time we traded out clothes for the changing seasons we filled bags to donate, and he cleaned out the bookshelves regularly because, ‘ _ They’re books, not trophies _ ,’ making a stack that I then went through, determining which ones were appropriate for my classroom library and which ones just needed to go. He also made me throw out a kitchen appliance or tool every time I got a new one, which, considering how much I liked to cook, was fairly often. I hadn’t done any of that in the two and a half years since he’d left for the deployment that had taken his life. And two years isn’t that long, in the grand scheme of things, but in my tiny house, the stuff started to pile up, especially after Chris and his family had spoiled me at Christmas.

Chris’s response to that explanation was to drop his stuff in the bedroom and declare that we were ordering pizza (Chinese the second night) and cleaning out my house. His own house - both of them, actually, the one in Boston and the one in L.A. - was pretty minimalist. Comfortable but sleek furniture, carefully curated memories here and there, and an office in each city with a tidy desk and bookshelves that were well-stocked, but only with books he either hadn’t yet read or would actually read or reference again. And while he almost certainly went through more clothes in total than I did, he rotated them regularly, keeping only a few favorite staples and items his stylist had picked for future events or encouraged him to keep for rewearing (in different combinations, of course) in the future. He insisted he was going to help me do the same. We were going to go room-by-room, figuring out what I really needed to keep and either donating or throwing out everything else. He was convinced I could even manage to get rid of some of my furniture, especially in the living room. Downsizing was a good thing, he told me, and insisted it was a great time to pare down to only the items I really needed, though he didn’t really explain what was so great about the timing.

“Tough love, baby, tough love,” he’d told me the first time I’d tried to convince him to let me keep something I really, really didn’t need, based solely on ‘sentimental value.’ (It really wasn’t all that sentimental, or special, I was just having issues letting things go.) The only exception, he told me right off the bat, was anything belonging or emotionally attached to my late husband. He said it wasn’t his place to question what I did with my husband’s belongings and that he wasn’t going to disrespect either of us, my husband or me, by pretending it was. The ironic thing about that was that I’d actually gone through his things shortly after he was killed. I’d kept only the things with  _ true  _ sentimental value to me, almost all of them fitting into a scrapbook I’d made or a designated drawer in his old dresser, and everything else I’d either given to one of his parents or his sister or I’d donated. That certainly wasn’t because I was cold-hearted or because I was trying to erase him from my life or my memories; the things I had kept meant the world to me. It was because looking at his running shoes by the back door or his old college textbooks - one of the few things  _ he _ refused to get rid of - on the shelves next to the many novels on my to-read list caused me more pain and anxiety than I could possibly deal with and actually expect to be able to get out of bed every morning.

Chris was determined that we were going to get through the whole house in those first two evenings, because the third day of his visit was our anniversary, and though we weren’t planning to do anything special on a Thursday, he said the cleaning shouldn’t be hanging over our heads on ‘our day,’ and we actually did have plans for the weekend. Before he took me to work that second morning - we typically did it that way, him driving me to and from school in my car when he visited so that he could get out of the house if he wanted - he’d asked me if any rooms, closets, cabinets, etc. were off-limits for him to go through. I told him no, and we came home from him picking me up on that second day for me to find that he’d gone through all the bedrooms and the attic, making piles in each room. We’d done the office and the living room together the first night and he said he was too scared to touch my kitchen, so he left that for me to deal with. The guest bedroom and master bedroom had been easy; the guest room really didn’t have anything to begin with, aside from a bed, nightstand, and small television, having been vacant since Victoria moved out (and unused altogether since Chris stopped sleeping in there). That closet had been used for my husband’s uniforms, so it had been empty for a long time, except two formal dresses I didn’t want to squeeze into my ‘real’ closet. The master bedroom was just as sparse. My husband had used that closet for his civilian clothes and I hadn’t taken it over once he was gone, so all there really was to go through was my dresser, which was all underwear, gym clothes, and a junk drawer that I agreed to let Chris dump straight into one of the bags of things to throw away. That only left the kitchen, the small third bedroom - which I used as my dressing room since the master was also small - and the attic - which, after Chris had brought down the summer clothes I was storing up there, was almost all Christmas decorations that even he said should be kept. He sent me into the kitchen and headed into the bedroom, where he’d also dumped the clothes from the attic, to begin sorting clothes into piles by season and function. ( _ “Come on baby, I think I can tell the difference between your work clothes and your weekend stuff.” _ )

I was standing on the counter pulling coffee mugs from the back corner of the top shelf of one of the upper cabinets - I really did have too, too many - when he called from the bedroom.

“Baby?”

“Yeah!” I pulled my head from the cabinet and started moving the mugs I’d pulled forward down to the counter, by my feet.

His voice got closer. “I have questions.”

“Okay, I’ll try to have answers.”

“You-,” he stopped short in the doorway to the kitchen and dropped the box he was carrying so he could reach up and let his hands hover just behind my thighs. “Whoa whoa whoa, calm down up there, Killer.”

I swatted at his hands. “Stop, I’m fine.”

“This afternoon I watched you trip on the carpet in your classroom. Not a rug, the actual floor.” I craned around to roll my eyes at him over my shoulder. “Just-just hold on a second.” He came a little closer so he could rest his hands on my hips, not missing the opportunity to pass them over my ass along the way. “Okay, turn around.” I tried to object but he glared at me. I rolled my eyes again and huffed to make sure he knew how ridiculous I thought he was being, but I started to turn between his hands, dodging coffee mugs as I went. “Slowly! Alright, c’mon.” He tightened his hands on my hips and held me as I lowered myself to the floor. I did lean forward and brace my hands on his shoulders, partly to humor him and partly because, though I would never admit it to him because doing so would only make him more smug, I did kind of love his strength and the way he was using it to support me as I lowered myself to the floor. “I got you.”

“I didn’t need to be  _ gotten _ , you know,” I told him, even as I rested my hands on his chest and leaned into him. “I was  _ fine _ .”

“Whatever,” he swatted my butt then turned and bent over the box he’d brought in, “I just feel better when your feet are on the floor, clumsy girl.” By the time he turned back around, a stack of t-shirts over his left arm, I was sitting on the counter he’d just pulled me off of, kicking my feet (which were very much  _ not  _ on the floor) lightly against the lower cabinet and smirking like the little snot I was intentionally being. “Brat,” he deadpanned, shaking his head and pulling the top t-shirt off the stack on his arm and flicking it at me.

I grinned. “You love me.”

“For some reason.” He pretended to ignore me when I pouted at him, but when I audibly whined he leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to my pursed lips. He tried not to smile as he backed away to lean on the island I used as a coffee counter and when he failed at that he looked down to study the shirt in his hand. “Anyway, South Carolina is your alma mater.” He held up the shirt he’d flung at me, a black one with the university’s logo on the front pocket area and a huge white silhouette of a gamecock on the back.

“Yep.” I nodded just once. “And that’s not a question.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m getting there.” He stuck his tongue out at me and I returned the gesture. He draped the shirt over his shoulder and pulled the next one off the stack to hold it up, the same way he’d done the first time. The second shirt was royal blue, UK logo taking up the entire front, the image of Rupp Arena filling the letters. “You grew up in Kentucky, which means by law you have to worship either UK or Louisville basketball.”

I nodded again and couldn’t help but grin at his use of my own words regarding my fandom of a school and team that was not my alma mater but that I had grown up supporting. “Correct.”

“Okay.” He repeated the process of placing the shirt on his shoulder and pulling up the next one, this time navy and orange. “And Brody just graduated from UVA.”

“Three for three,” I made my voice a little sing-songy, clearly teasing. He ignored me and went for the next shirt, a maroon racerback tank.

“So,” he drew the word out and paused for effect, “Virginia Tech?”

I grinned, that time completely unconsciously, and my voice went a little soft. “Julie. It was my Christmas gift her freshman year.”

“Uh-huh. And …” he held up the next shirt, royal blue again, a big, white, somewhat abstract logo on the front.

“That’s Washington and Lee. Emma brought me that one when she came home for fall break as a freshman.”

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, shaking his head a little, more amused than annoyed. “Okay.” The next shirt was a darker blue, Old Dominion University.

“Porter.” I named another former student, a young man Chris hadn’t met but whose name he recognized from listening to me talk about different musicals I’d overseen.

“And Mississippi State?” The seventh shirt came off the stack.

I grinned a little wider, remembering the young man who’d graduated two and a half years earlier, a student who’d practically stumbled into the theatre program as a lighting technician his sophomore year as a last-minute favor and had ended up helping run the program by the time he was a senior. “Curtis. Also, one of my kids from Louisiana played football there until a couple years ago. CJ, I worked with him as an eighth grader. He’s actually with the Broncos now.”

“C …” Chris’s face lit up, “Morgan?”

“Yeah!” I bounced a little on the counter; it hadn’t occurred to me that Chris would be familiar with him, though it really should have. I loved watching football, but he actually followed it. “He was the  _ sweetest  _ kid. And that smile, it’s impossible not to be happy around him.”

From the look on his face, I wasn’t sure he’d even heard the last bit of what I’d said. “He’s on my fantasy team! He’s the reason I beat Downey last week!”

I laughed. “Well, I’m sure he’s happy to have helped.”

“Yeah,  _ I’m  _ definitely happy.” He trailed off and his hundred-yard gaze told me he was thinking about his win. He actually shook his head to bring himself out of it and picked up the next shirt, again, blue, with a red and white logo. “Okay, anyway, I don’t even  _ know  _ what school this is.” 

“Oh, Louisiana Tech.” I actually reached out to touch that one. Honestly, it had gotten buried under all the others and I had forgotten it was even there. “Ryan, my very first adopted kid ever, sent me that one. But lots of my kids from my time in Louisiana went there.”

“So I guess that also explains,” he bent to pull a purple shirt from the box, “this one.” The gold and white LSU logo glared back at me when he held it up.

I turned up my nose a little. “Ugh, yeah. It’s rough, but I had quite a few kids end up there.”

He shook his head as he pulled yet another shirt from his arm. “Okay, this one I actually got a little excited about, but … MIT?”

“Drake.” Another name that probably only barely registered to him; there had come a point, earlier in our relationship, when he’d stopped asking for details every time I mentioned a name he didn’t recognize and just assumed it was one of my kids. 

He sped up the process, grabbing the next shirt and calling out the name without even holding it up to me. “And Columbia?”

“Gah,” my right hand flew to cover my heart, “my sweet, sweet girl Jordan.”

The twelfth and final shirt came off his arm. “Shenandoah? I don’t even know where that is.”

“It’s in the Shenandoah Valley, western Virginia. Abby.”

His arm finally empty, he pulled all the shirts from where they now rested on his shoulder and dropped them unceremoniously back into the box. “Okay, baby,” he sighed and came to hook his hands behind my knees, pulling them apart so that he could stand between them, “this is ridiculous.”

“They’re my kids.” I rested my hands on his shoulders and traced my thumbs up and down the sides of his neck and gave him my best puppy dog eyes.

He opened his mouth to say something and I brought my eyebrows a little closer together, tilting my head to the side and sliding my hands behind his neck to link my fingers together there. He closed his mouth and dropped his chin to his chest. “There’s absolutely no chance any of these is going in the ‘donate’ box, is there?” he asked me when he lifted his head after a couple seconds.

My face went from pitiful to  _ if looks could kill  _ in a fraction of a second.

His hands flew up defensively, palms out to me. “I’ve  _ literally _ seen you wear two of them.” I knew he was referring to the Kentucky and Carolina ones.

I protested. “I wear the Tech one to the gym a lot! That's what it's for!”

He dropped his hands, letting them fall to his sides, his fingers brushing my calves. “Okay, three. Out of,” he looked down into the box, “you know what, I don’t even know. There are more I didn’t even bring in here.” He lifted one hand to gesture toward the room he’d been working in.

“Some of them aren’t the right size,” I explained, “turns out teenagers, especially teenage boys, aren’t great at estimating that. And I’m sorry,” I brought my hands back around to his front and held onto his shirt at his collarbones, tugging so that he rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, “but there is absolutely  _ no way  _ I can rep any SEC school that isn’t Kentucky or Carolina, no matter which kids go there.” I shrugged at the end as if to seal my point.

He brought his hands back up to my knees then ran them up the outsides of my thighs to my hips. He went even farther, curling his hands around where my backside met the counter, and pulled me just to the edge. Out of habit I crossed my ankles behind him. “So, just to be clear, you can own them, but you can’t wear them. Is that the gist?”

I lowered my chin to look up at him through my lashes. “They’re from my kids. I can’t get rid of them.”

He shook his head at me, but brought a hand up to tuck my hair behind my ear. His fingertips trailed along my jaw, lifting my head back up, until he could trace my bottom lip with his thumb. “You’re a mess, baby girl.”

I leaned forward to drop my forehead to his and his hand slid into my hair. “I know,” I agreed, and he chuckled before using his hold on me to tilt my head forward so he could kiss me.


	2. Valentine's Day

_ 3 weeks later (February 14, Year 3) _

Mondays suck, almost without exception. Valentine’s Day on a Monday, with Chris 2,000 miles away in L.A., was most definitely  _ not  _ going to be that always hoped-for exception. I had never really put much emphasis on the holiday, even with my husband, but I had to admit that I was just a touch surprised not to have gotten  _ something _ from Chris - flowers at school, maybe, or even just a cheesy text with a silly gif - because he was quite the romantic when he wanted to be and I had expected him to break, or at least bend, our (my) ‘no big gifts’ rule. Besides, I knew he’d received the gift I´d sent for him by the time my lunch period came around. But, by the end of the day, all I’d gotten was a couple hand-made construction paper cards (written in Spanish, the result of a class assignment) and a few candy-grams purchased from the student council, and I had decided that would be the extent of my acknowledgement of the day. I wasn’t upset about it, truly, but I also wasn’t having a great day for just basic  _ Monday as a high school teacher _ reasons, and I was ready to be home, away from annoyingly amorous teenagers, with a glass of wine. I was also ready to hear his voice, and, if I was lucky, see his face for a few minutes, even though it would be just through a screen and even if we continued to ignore the fact that it was Valentine’s Day, before I went to bed. 

What I wasn’t ready for was the giant box on my front doorstep when I got home. There was no return address - there was no address at all, in fact, just my name in giant Sharpie letters across the center - but I knew, or hoped at least, that it was from him (because it would be really creepy otherwise). The biggest part of me wanted to be annoyed that he’d broken the rules - or refused to play the game altogether, which was probably more accurate - but the smaller part, a part that I couldn't help but feel made me a little selfish, was excited and intrigued by the package. As soon as I made it into the house, after maneuvering the box so that it balanced on the stoop where I could just open the door around it then dragging it awkwardly inside (because my arms were too full, and too short, to wrap all the way around it to lift it), I opened my laptop and called him through Skype. I wasn’t entirely confident he’d answer, because I figured he would be working - a meeting or an interview, maybe an appearance; I was vaguely aware of his schedule while he was in L.A., but the time difference and my own busy schedule with both official school obligations and the work I brought home to do off the clock made it hard to keep his packed schedule completely straight in my head - but his grinning face filled the screen after the second ring.

"Christopher Robert Evans, what did you do?" I dropped onto the chaise end of the couch and rested the computer at the far end of the cushion, leaning forward to let my elbow sink into the plush seat and dropping my chin into my palm to look through the camera lens at him. The couch and wall behind him matched those from the selfie he’d sent me earlier, so I knew he was still on set. One item on his schedule I  _ did  _ remember clearly, because I’d been looking forward to it probably more than he had, was his visit to  _ Ellen _ that morning (well, morning for him, anyway, midday for me), but I was a little surprised he was still there. I was glad though, since it meant I got to see his face. He’d been booked to talk about the movie he’d worked on the previous summer and fall, which would be releasing in theaters at the end of the month, after which he’d finally be back to spend almost two whole weeks with me. The movie was unlike anything he’d done before - a family drama (one that  _ didn’t  _ revolve around a murdered patriarch) and a true storyteller’s movie. The filming itself had been rough, especially in the beginning, but he ended up loving his character and I was excited to see him getting to show a different side of himself as an actor. I was also just excited about the story itself.

"I have no idea to what you are referring." He answered in response to my half-question, half-accusation. His grammar became annoyingly accurate when he was being cheeky.

"Okay you,” I huffed, shaking my head, “don't do that. And seriously, we said we weren't doing anything big."

I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but his grin got a little wider. "Who said I did anything big?"

"Chris!” I almost yelled, and Millie came running from where she was attacking a squeaky toy in the next room. “I could barely bring it into the house."

He lowered his chin and lifted one eyebrow, looking up at me through long lashes. "Okay, you're exaggerating. It can't be _ that  _ heavy, and you're deceptively strong."

I chose to ignore his barely veiled attempt at sucking up - complete with a cocky (sexy) smirk, in case there was any doubt as to his intention - and keep up my indignant act. "Hey now, I never said I wasn't strong enough. But my arms are barely long enough."

He laughed for several seconds before responding. “Yeah, well, what's the saying from _ Doctor Who _ ? It’s bigger on the inside? Well, this is smaller on the inside.” I just rolled my eyes. I knew better than to believe him. 

It’s not like I hadn’t gotten him  _ anything _ . I’d sent my gift for him to Scott about a week earlier so that I could make sure he got it on Valentine’s Day. I didn’t want it to be late, but I also didn’t want it to be early, because I didn’t trust that he’d wait to open it. I’d been working on it, sort of, since just before Christmas, and though it wasn’t big, in the material or monetary sense, I thought he would really appreciate the thought behind it. 

While in Boston with him and his family for Christmas and New Year’s, I’d been in a small independent book store with his sisters and had come across a beautiful leather-bound notebook with rough-cut parchment pages. I’d bought it, feeling it would make a perfect gift for him, even though I didn’t know at the time exactly what I would do with it or when I would give it to him. Later that same night, though, after coming across a few old journals of his while looking through the shelves in his office for a book he’d recommended to me (I didn’t read them, but I could tell right away that’s what they were - the covers worn in ways that showed many, many repeated uses, dates scrawled in his heavy hand on the inside front cover of the only one I opened, just before replacing it gently and running my fingertips tenderly, lovingly, over the spines of the others), I’d figured out, partially anyway, how to turn the book into an appropriately thoughtful gift for him. 

Since my husband died, I’d been keeping a journal myself, on the advice of my therapist. Once Chris and I met, he became a recurring figure in many of the entries, first as the incredibly talented movie star I couldn’t believe I was going to be working with, even under such undesirable circumstances; then, he appeared as the unexpected but tremendously appreciated friend I hadn’t realized I’d been in such desperate need of; next he was the other half of a budding, growing romance; finally he had become the love I couldn’t imagine my life without. I’d ended up transferring many of the journal entries into the new notebook, rewriting them with nicer handwriting, no crossed out words and sentences, and fewer tear stains (not  _ no  _ tear stains, but fewer). I’d also used my very limited scrapbooking skills to decorate the pages (simply, tastefully, I hoped) with relevant pictures from significant moments - pictures me, of us, and even one he’d never seen before of him asleep on my couch with Millie snuggled up to him in a way she never would with me. I’d been nearly finished with the whole project by late January, a few days after he’d headed out to California after spending a week with me for our anniversary, and couldn’t wait any longer than Valentine’s Day to give it to him. So, I devoted the entire next weekend to doing nothing else, then overnighted it to Scott

I was proud of what I’d put together, but I had no idea how it would stack up next to whatever was in the box in front of me. “Even if it’s not as big as it looks, it’s almost definitely not just a journal-photo album-scrapbook- _ whatever _ .”

“No. It’s not. It’s not  _ nearly  _ that good.” Scott had stuck around while he opened it and sent me a video of him getting lost in the pages, so I didn’t actually doubt his sincerity. Still, I had a feeling he wasn’t giving his own gift the credit it deserved.

“Chris-” I protested half-heartedly. 

“Look, baby, I know we had the whole ‘no big gifts since we can’t actually be together’ thing,” he actually used air quotes and I glared at the screen, “and I know right now you’re looking at that box and you feel bad because you think that I did more for you than you did for me. Yeah?”

I  couldn’t say he was wrong, because that would be a lie. But I also didn’t want to admit that he was right. So all I did was roll my eyes.

He smirked. “Yeah, I’m right. But baby, first of all, I don’t care about that. At all. I like spoiling you. I  _ love  _ it, in fact.” His brow lowered and he pointed at the camera with the hand that wasn’t holding the phone. “So you should probably get used to me ignoring these parameters you set on gift-giving. But second of all, seriously, this is not as big or impressive as you think it is. In fact!” He suddenly looked very proud of himself, accomplished, excited, even. “I’m not actually even giving you anything you didn’t already have.” That was a strange statement to seem so happy about.

“How does that even,” I laughed, nervous, confused, “that doesn’t make sense.”

“Look woman,” he growled playfully, “would you just open the damn box already?”

I gasped, feigning offense, then narrowed my eyes at the camera. “Fine. Bossy.” I sat up and started to push myself off the couch. His voice stopped me short.

“And put me where I can see!”

I took a second to laugh at him before I turned back to pick up the computer and set it on the coffee table. “Dork,” I accused.

“You wouldn’t want me any other way,” he grinned, all white teeth and crinkled eyes. I couldn’t have argued if I’d wanted to. 

I arranged the computer, angling it toward the end of the chaise and tilting it down just enough that the lens captured the top couple inches of the box but also got enough of the couch cushion that he would see not only the box, but me as I opened it. I promised him I’d be right back then went to the kitchen and came back with a box cutter from the junk drawer. I settled back onto the end of the couch and looked into the camera, eyebrows raised in question. He nodded and sent me a thumbs up to let me know the laptop was positioned appropriately. Butterflies started to spring to life in my stomach as I sliced through the tape. I didn’t  _ want  _ to be so excited about a gift - it felt materialistic, which I really, really didn’t want to be - but I couldn’t help it. He may or may not have been being truthful about it being ‘smaller on the inside,’ but no matter how big it was or wasn’t, in the physical sense, I had a feeling it would be huge in the sentimental one. 

I drew in a deep breath and held it for just a second, refusing to look at the camera because I knew I’d see that shit-eating grin staring back at me (I knew he could tell that I was more excited than I wanted to admit), then opened the flaps of the cardboard packing box and froze. “Chris. It’s a box in a box.”

“Really?” He sounded like a little kid, and when I looked at the screen, he looked like one too. “Let me see!” I tilted the whole package toward the table I had him sitting on so that he could see down inside it. His eyes lit up when he took in the white, almost satiny-looking box and the wide red ribbon wrapped around it and tied into a huge bow, almost half the width of the box itself. I got so distracted looking at him, looking at how happy he was about his gift, that I forgot about it myself for a second. “Ooh, that one’s pretty! She did a good job.”

That brought me back to reality. “She?” How many people did he have involved in this little venture? And how did he even know anyone near where I lived to package the gift and deliver it to my front door?

He just shook his head. “Just keep going.”

I eyed him suspiciously for a second and he waved his free hand at me, just a quick flick of his wrist to tell me to keep going. I rolled my eyes and he winked at me. I reached down into the cardboard box and gingerly fit my hands into the small spaces on either side of the smooth, pretty, white one. I tried to lift it out, but my hands were wedged in so that when I pulled, the outer box came up as well. I huffed and paused for a second, frustrated, then had a thought. I repositioned myself on the end of the couch, perching right on the edge of the cushion and pulling the box closer so that I could rest one foot on either side of it, then butterflied my knees open to press the bottoms of my feet, still in my knee-high leather boots from work, to the sides of the box. I vaguely heard Chris snicker, but I ignored him and tugged at the white box again. It took some maneuvering, some wiggling side-to-side, but eventually, after several seconds, I had managed to pull it clear of the cardboard. I kicked the packing box aside and set the pretty white one on the floor in front of me.

I ran my hands lightly over the box - it really was incredibly smooth - and paused to rub the velvet ribbon between my thumb and forefinger. I resituated, pulling my legs up in front of me and tugging my boots off so I could tuck my feet under opposite thighs. I could hear Chris shuffling around on the other end of the video call - his jacket rustling against the couch cushions, his fists punching into a pillow softly as he held it on his lap, more out of an anxious need to move than anything else, I was sure. I looked up at him through my lashes; he was definitely getting restless. Too bad. If he was going to make such a production out of the gift, I was going to savor opening it. Besides, if he said anything I’d just remind him of the video Scott had sent me through Marco Polo and the way he’d lingered on one page - the Christmas one, I thought, with the picture of him, his niece and nephews, and me on the floor of his mom’s living room reading a book on Christmas Eve, his legs clad in red and green flannel and stretched in front of him, mine, reindeer dancing over them, draped over his, his niece curled in my lap, and the boys sprawled next to us on their stomachs, tree sparkling in the background - for a good minute or longer, his thumbnail between his teeth and his eyes watering. 

I tugged the ends of the ribbon until the bow unraveled and tossed them gently to the sides so they fluttered to the floor. When I pulled the top off the box I was met with a layer of red and pink tissue paper. I pulled it gently out of the box, growing, for some reason, a little more nervous each second. I knew I didn’t actually need to be nervous, and  _ nervous  _ probably wasn’t even the right word. Anxious maybe. Or even excited. But really, it was probably something between all of those. I heard him groan quietly, impatient, but I ignored it. I pulled out the last sheet of tissue paper and crumpled it in my hand as that hand came to my chest, the other drifting up to cover my mouth. 

“I - Chris - what did you do?”

“Is it okay?” I looked up at him for a second, just long enough to see that thumb back between his teeth, eyes squinted and brow furrowed in concern. I dropped my eyes back down into the box and let my hands follow them, the tissue paper drifting to the floor.

“How?” I ran my fingertips over the outline of the red and white logo screen printed onto blue cotton. After I’d traced that one, I flattened my palms against the fabric and moved them outward, the right one drifting over the gold and white  _ LSU _ that sat on a sea of purple and the left hitting the maroon background of Virginia Tech. Those were my t-shirts. They were my shirts, cut into squares and sewn together, a panel of gray, white, or black between each one and the next. I could only see those three in full, but above and below each of them was an array of colors - multiple different blues, green and gold, Michigan State green and white. And based on the thickness of the package and the plushness of the fabric under my hands, I knew there were more. And quilting. Definitely quilting. 

He cleared his throat, and when I looked up at him he was fidgeting. His knee bounced and his hands fluttered in front of him. “The Louisiana Tech one is in the center, since you said Ryan was your first adopted kid. Then LSU beside that one, and they spiral out, oldest to newest. I think I got them all in the right order.”

“This is,” I reached into the box, hands tucking around what used to be my shirts and all the way to the bottom to slide under the plush bundle and lift it out. “How many …” I measured it with my hands, running them over and around in every direction. I could see three shirts in the center and it was folded probably four, maybe five times. “Just  _ how _ ?”

“Remember that box of shirts I told you I was going to put in the attic?” I looked at him on the computer screen and nodded. I kept my eyes on him but my hands kept running over and over my gift. “Well, I didn’t.” He huffed out a little laugh and I giggled in return. “While you were at work the next day I went online and I found someone who does that kind of stuff,” he gestured toward me, toward his phone, “and I called, and I dropped off the shirts that day. You actually taught her daughter, at one point. I don’t remember her name right now, but I have her card, I can tell you later.” He stopped talking and just looked at me for a few seconds, a soft smile on his face that I really hoped I was returning. “Okay, seriously, I need you to tell me what you think.”

All I could do was shake my head. “I have no words. I just … I don’t know what to say.”

He cleared his throat. “If you hate it, or if I screwed up, I can replace all the shirts. The Virginia Tech one already is a replacement, actually, since you wear that one to the gym. I kinda stalked your Twitter, and I sent Scott to do the same on Instagram, and we got in touch with kids from every one of those schools and I can replace every shirt on there, if you want the shirts back. It’s just, you said you couldn’t get rid of them, but also that you don’t wear them, so I just thought …” he trailed off.

I shook my head harder, adamant. “Chris, this is perfect. I mean … it’s just perfect. I don’t know what else to say about it.” I had undone one of the folds, opening it up so that I could see the next row of shirts above the ones I’d seen when I opened the box. University of Virginia, Washington and Lee, George Mason University - all schools attended by students who had graduated the same time as Brody and Julie. I was starting to try to guess what the next row down would be, since he said they spiralled based on year (the one below Tech was probably Michigan State, the colors were right, and the one to the right of that was probably ODU, the start of the next graduating class, then Mississippi State beside that).

“I know it’s not the most romantic Valentine’s Day gift,” my eyes shot back up to the screen to catch the tail end of a dismissive wave of his hand, “but I thought it would mean something. And, I don’t know,” a shrug, then, “you can put it on the couch, or at the foot of ou-” he coughed lightly and cleared his throat, “ _ your  _ bed.” His hand flew to the back of his neck, and though I couldn’t see his actual hand, I could see the veins and muscles in his forearm where he’d pushed up the sleeve of his jacket, flexing and moving as he rubbed there. “You’ll get a lot more use out of them this way than you did as shirts folded up and shoved in the back of your closet. This way you’ll see them every day.”

I wrapped my arms around the quilt and hugged it tight to my chest, squeezing my arms around it so it bulged at the top and I could rest my chin on it. “This is the  _ most  _ romantic gift I’ve ever been given. Ever.”

“No it’s not,” he scoffed. “It’s a quilt made out of t-shirts from your former students. As far as Valentine’s gifts go, it’s probably kind of crap. But, I don’t know,” he brought his free hand from behind his neck over to his opposite shoulder and rubbed at his collarbone with his thumb, “it just seemed right, for you.”

“Exactly.” I tilted my head to the side and reached out toward the computer before I really realized what I was doing. When it clicked that I wasn’t actually reaching for  _ him,  _ as much as I wished I was, I brought my hand down to wrap around the bottom part of the blanket where it rested on my lap. “And that’s why it’s so romantic. Chris, you  _ listen  _ to me, like no one ever has. No one.” It was true. The last thing I wanted to do was badmouth my late husband. And I wasn’t, really. But he hadn’t given the same attention to the little things that Chris did. He paid attention to all the big things, all the things most people would probably consider important. And maybe it isn’t even fair to say he didn’t give attention to the little things, it was more just that he put emphasis on different things than I did. He always treated me incredibly well and I never doubted that he loved me and wanted to be there for me and make me happy, and that had always been enough. It’s just that he would have looked at that pile of shirts and seen just that, a pile of shirts. And while he wouldn’t have forced me to get rid of them (he was still around when they started piling up and he’d never done more than shake his head and raise an eyebrow), he also wouldn’t have done something like  _ this  _ just because he could tell how important they were to me. It wasn’t a comparison between the two, not really. If anything it was just another acknowledgement of how the two relationships, the two men, were too different, too distinct, to even attempt to compare, how it wasn’t so much that the two represented different chapters in my life, but different books altogether.

I rotated the blanket a little in my arms, scooching back some on the couch so I could unfold it a little more without letting it fall onto the floor. My eyes roamed over the shirts; they were wrinkled and a little bunched up, but I could see the entire center section from top to bottom, five rows of three, and it felt like there was one more row on each side. That would make it five by five; I hadn’t even realized I had that many shirts to begin with. He definitely had a point about them being shoved in the back of my closet and ignored. “This,” I looked back up at him through the camera lens, “I don’t know why I’ve never thought of doing this myself, but that just makes it even better that you did. You listened to me, Chris. You listened to what was important to me, even to the things I never actually said, and you took that important thing, these physical symbols of my connections to my kids, and you made it even better. There is nothing more romantic than being listened to and respected by the person you love. And the surprise factor and the pretty wrapping certainly doesn’t hurt.” I bit my bottom lip, smiling a little, but also trying to swallow down the lump in my throat.

“I just figured one quilt was more convenient than 24 t-shirts. Oh, and speaking of,” he sat up from where he’d reclined against the back of the couch and his hand flew off his shoulder, fingers clenching and releasing, over and over again, “there’s one part you haven’t gotten to yet.”

“No,” I held my hands up in front of me, palms out. “No more.”

“No, not more,” he laughed, his voice mocking, “just finish unfolding it. Bottom, uhh,” his eyes lifted to the ceiling momentarily as he thought, “right. Bottom right.”

I finished unfolding the blanket, letting the top few rows fold back down over one another so I could get to the one he’d told me to find. I gasped and my breath hitched in my throat. “Oh my - how did you do this?”   


I could tell he was trying not to, but he smirked a little. He leaned forward and all I could see was the dark cotton of his tshirt as the phone came closer to his chest, but I could hear his free hand on what I assumed was a table in front of him, and what was possibly something being dragged across it. After a moment the phone started to move and I had to turn away because the shaky camera work was making me a little seasick. “Okay,” he finally breathed, and I looked back to the screen to find him sitting squarely back on the couch again, leaning forward a little bit with his forearms on his knees and his hands linked together, bouncing a little, between his legs. “Like I told you, Scott and I talked to them online. We asked them to send us messages - some,” he shrugged and twisted his mouth into an odd little expression, one side quirking down and the other staying in place, “like Brody, were easier than others. Some took convincing to believe they weren’t being scammed.” I giggled, a watery, pitiful little sound, and it made him smile. “They hand-wrote the messages then scanned them and sent them to me. I sent the scans of the handwritten notes to a screen printer to be put onto a t-shirt then had that one sent directly to the woman making the quilt.”

I tilted my head all the way back, staring at the ceiling above me and blowing all the air from my lungs out between pursed lips. “I was wrong before.” I sniffled a little and lowered my head to look back at him. “This just took the romantic gesture score up to like, 27.”

He laughed. “On a scale of?”

I grinned, thinking that I didn’t know if it was awesome or just plain sad that, even over wi-fi, he could tell the difference between happy tears and sad, or scared, ones. “Ten.”

He laughed even harder. “I still don’t see it,” he threw his hands up, “but I’ll take it.”

I let myself laugh along with him for a couple seconds then put on my best  _ I’m not trying to be stern, but please take what I’m about to say seriously _ face. “Chris, I need you to know, I mean it.” I shook my head when he rolled his eyes playfully. “I mean, I get that it’s not traditionally romantic,” I held my hands up, dancing them a little on either side of my face to mockingly emphasize the last two words, and he chuckled, “because it’s dealing with former students-slash-adopted kids and you used my own shirts, and it’s not roses or chocolates or jewelry, or whatever else you want to argue.”

“Wow, making me feel tons better here babe.” 

“ _But_ I need you to believe me when I say that the thought behind this, the way this shows what kind of person you are and the way it makes me feel heard and respected and _loved,”_ I gathered a fistful of fabric in each hand and tucked the quilt up against my chest. I pressed my face down into it and had the thought that the absolute only way the gift would be better was if the shirts smelled like him and not my own laundry detergent. “With this gift you have just obliterated the bar for romantic gestures.”

“Well shit,” he threw his hands up into the air then clapped them together before letting them fall to his lap, “that’s gonna make things a little tough.”

“What?”   


“Nothing,” he said quickly. “Nothing, just, you know, in the future. How do I top a 27, ya know?” He shrugged and scrubbed his palms over the charcoal gray fabric hugging his thighs.

I scoffed and shook my head. “You don’t have to  _ top  _ it, Dopey. It’s a Valentine’s Day gift, that’s supposed to be the most romantic, right?”

“Nah, there are some things that need to top Valentine’s Day.”

I cocked my head and my brow furrowed in confusion. “I don’t-”

“Don’t worry about it, baby,” he cut me off, eyes closed, shaking his head and waving a hand quickly in front of him. “I’m just giving you a hard time.” He smirked for a second then his face softened. “You promise you’re good with it? You’re not upset that I gave someone your shirts to be cut into pieces?”

“I’m not mad. It’s perfect.” I lifted the computer off the coffee table and held it carefully in one hand as I pushed myself back to recline against the couch cushions and used my other hand to pull the new quilt up over me. I smoothed it and tucked it under my arms, then rested the computer on my lap, the camera directed up at my shoulders and face. “I just wish you were here to enjoy it with me.” I didn’t  _ mean  _ to pout.

“Ohhh,” his eyes screwed shut and his head dropped until his chin hit his chest, “don’t do that, baby girl.” He looked back up at me through those dark lashes with sad eyes.

I scrunched up my nose, “Sorry.”

He laced the fingers of his hands together, tenting the index fingers up above the rest, and brought his hands up to his face so that when he bounced them backward and forward, the base of those long fingers bumped his chin and the tips tapped the end of his nose. “I miss you too. You have no idea. But soon, right? Only a couple weeks ‘till Kentucky.” He brought his hands back down until his arms crossed, elbows on knees. I only hummed and jerked my eyebrows toward the ceiling. “It’s gonna be good. I promise. I can be charming when I really want to be.” He wiggled his eyebrows.

I nodded and chuckled under my breath. “I don’t think it’s possible for you to  _ not  _ be charming - I’ve said this before, I think everyone who meets you falls a little bit in love with you. I just hope  _ they _ all behave  _ themselves _ .”

“And if they don’t, it’ll be a story we tell later,” he shrugged. “Remember, I don’t care who they are, I love you because of who  _ you  _ are. You matter too much to me for them to change that. And hey,” he leaned a little closer to the phone, the same way he would do to me in-person, if we’d had the luxury, “we’ll be spending more time with your best friend and her family than anyone, and at the end of it all there’s basketball.” He raised his eyebrows and grinned like he was trying to coax his niece or one of his nephews into doing something they didn’t want to do by tricking them into thinking it was a game. “So really, more good than bad, no matter how you slice it.”

I sighed - far more dramatically than necessary. “Ashley is good. Kentucky basketball is good.” I rolled my eyes and smiled, begrudgingly. “Anything with you is better than good.”

He didn’t even pretend not to smirk, cocky as all hell. “That’s my girl.”

I tucked my arms under the quilt and tugged it a little higher to cover my shoulders and tuck it under my chin, dragging the computer along with it. The little screen in the corner showing me what he saw showed that he was getting a very lopsided version of me. He cocked his head to the side as he looked at me. I didn’t fix it. “I seriously can’t believe you did this. Just the notes alone would have been more than I could ever thank you for.”

“Oh!” He jumped and reached forward for the phone with both hands. “Yeah, about that ...” the man knew how to work a dramatic pause, “some of the kids didn’t do so well with the request for  _ short  _ notes. I had to ask some of them to pare their messages down to fit them all on the square, but I still have the original scans and they mailed me the actual hand-written notes. I’ll bring them when I come out for the game, if that’s okay? I could mail ‘em, but I’d like to do at least part of this in person.”

My eyes widened and I think I bounced a little on the couch cushion. “It’s more than okay!”

“You’re so fuckin’ cute.”

My cheeks burned a little as he laughed at me. “Chris, I know I’m repeating myself, but, this ...” he ducked his head and smiled a little indulgently. “I can’t tell you what this means to me.”

“You don’t need to, baby. This,” he he pulled the phone in closer and sighed, “is everything. Okay, no. Actually,” he rolled his eyes and drew out the word ‘actually,’ “ _ everything _ will be when I can be there under that blanket with you. But it’s damn near everything. Happy Valentine's Day, baby.”

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Chris.” I found myself rubbing my thumbs over the soft jersey cotton on the back of the quilt where I held it under my chin. 

“Okay,” he drawled reluctantly, “I gotta go, before Ellen’s security comes and kicks me out of this dressing room. But I’ll call you back after my fitting with my stylist for the premiere? Should be shortly before your bedtime.” I nodded; he used to tease me about my ‘bedtime,’ but over time it just became part of the language we used with each other. “I love you.”

“I love you back. And Chris?”

“Yeah baby?”

" On a scale of one to 10, you’re a 27 for romantic gestures, but you’re a 35, 40, easy, overall.” He laughed and winked, then brought his fingertips to his lips for a second before waving and finally disconnecting the call.

I continued to smile at the ‘call disconnected’ screen for a second before pulling my right arm out from under the blanket to close the computer and set it on the end table at my side. I let myself sink a little farther down into the couch and wrapped the quilt tighter around me. It was a Monday, so I of course had work to do, papers that had been turned in and needed to be graded, rehearsal notes to look over, and I also needed to fix dinner and make it to the gym for my Monday class. But a few extra minutes with my gift wouldn’t mess any of those things up too badly, and for a couple minutes, it made me miss him just a tiny bit less.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All stories in this collection will be an anthology of connected one-shots that exist within the same universe; and the officially no longer follow chronological order. They may eventually be reorganized into novel-format, but that would be quite a way down the road.

**Author's Note:**

> All stories in this collection will be an anthology of connected one-shots that exist within the same universe; and the officially no longer follow chronological order. They may eventually be reorganized into novel-format, but that would be quite a way down the road.


End file.
